Good Trouble

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.

– John Lewis

On July 30th, 2020, the New York Times published John Lewis’ final essay, a vivid and commanding rallying cry for all Americans to stand up, speak up and speak out by casting our votes and by studying and learning the lessons of history.

With John Lewis in mind we asked our community to share the ways in which they have participated in “good and necessary trouble” over the years. The sentiments conveyed in the images represented in this digital exhibition portray a number of social movements  – environmental, anti-war, social justice and others – and remind us that using our voices to foment positive change is a venerable Oregonian tradition. “It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either,” wrote Rabbi Tarfon nearly 2000 years ago. At OJMCHE we work to make connections from the past to the present in order to create a better future for all.

[ABOVE] A hit song of 1915, and one of the first anti-war songs, “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier,” by lyricist Alfred Bryan and composer Al Piantadosi, captured widespread American skepticism about joining in the European war and was influential within the pacifist movement.

[BELOW] On the night of November 9, 1938, Nazi officials ordered the destruction of all Jewish businesses and synagogues in the Greater German Reich, which included Austria and part of Czechoslovakia. This violence was called Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” in reference to the broken glass that filled the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were crushed.

At the turn of the 20^th century many Eastern European Jewish immigrants settled south of downtown Portland forming a nearly self- sufficient community lasting more than fifty years. The neighborhood changed radically in the late 1950s under the city’s first urban renewal project. Shops closed or relocated, homes and businesses were razed and a unique part of Portland’s history ended.

The student strike at Harvard University was one of the most iconic moments of the 1960s student protests. Strikers demanded an end to university complicity in the U.S. war in Vietnam (ousting ROTC off campus); an end to evictions of working-class people from property the university wanted to develop; and the creation of a Black studies program.

Earth Day was founded to give voice to environmental consciousness and the state of our planet. Portlander Paul Fishman coordinated the first Earth Day activities at the University of California Irvine in 1970.

[ABOVE] In the 1970s, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) arranged for thousands of Jewish refugees to emigrate from the Soviet Union, arguing for their refugee status on the basis of religious discrimination. Portland was one destination for these immigrants. During the 1990s approximately one million Soviet Jews migrated to Israel and 300,000 to the United States, including 243 families who found safe haven in Oregon.

[BELOW] The 1971 May Day Protests were a series of civil disobedience demonstrations in protest against the Vietnam War. The People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice was one of the sponsors of the rally in San Francisco, which drew 150,000 people.

On Saturday, September 4, 1971, 1,500 women – smiling, laughing, yelling, chanting, painted, angry, beautiful, happy – marched in opposition to the Vietnam War against the Presidio, the headquarters of the 6th Army and construction site of the Western Medical Institute of Research.

[ABOVE] On August 6, 1983, the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, participants in five countries began a fast, refusing to end until “negotiations at Geneva indicate that a halt will be called to the spread of nuclear weapons.” Although the international fast garnered a nomination for the Nobel peace prize, it failed to receive support from either the United States or Russia.

[BELOW] On May 23, 1989 developer Philip J. Morford showed up to demolish a block of vintage houses in order to build a row of townhouses on NW Overton Street. The neighborhood responded by protesting. Some sat on the porch of the house, adamantly refusing to move. That day 23 people were arrested; most were charged with trespass and obstruction of justice. Ruth Roth, a Portland native and OJMCHE board member, has lived in NW Portland for thirty-three years. In 1989, when she heard the bulldozers were preparing to begin demolition, she rushed to NW Overton and indignantly sat down on the front porch of one of the houses, refusing to move despite entreaties by the police. “My actions were fueled by pure fury,” she said later.

[ABOVE] Tom Metzger, founder of the White Aryan Resistance, was tried in a wrongful death civil suit for the murder of Mulugeta Seraw, a 28-year old Ethiopian immigrant, who had been killed by three Portland skinheads in 1988. Metzger and his son John were convicted of inciting Seraw’s murder and with a then record $12.5 million judgement against him.

[BELOW] Henk Pander designed and distributed this poster protesting the Gulf War in 1991 “out of pure frustration. I had to do something. If one is going to be subversively active, one should experience the reaction.”

In 1992 Ballot Measure 9 was an unsuccessful anti-gay amendment proposed to Oregon voters by the conservative group, Oregon Citizen’s Alliance (OCA). Same-sex marriage became legal on May 19, 2014 when U.S. District Court Judge Michael McShane overturned the Oregon’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

[ABOVE] The World Trade Organization is a global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. The conference in Seattle in 1999 inspired a large protest, including members of Portland’s Jewish community, focused on issues including workers’ rights, sustainable economies, and environmental and social concerns.

[BELOW] The Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City and is one of the oldest, nonprofit, theater companies in the US. The original Masonite cuts featured on this poster were made by founder Peter Schumann in 2003 when a US-led coalition bombed Baghdad at the start of the second Gulf War.

Occupy Portland began in downtown Portland on October 6, 2011 to protest worldwide economic inequality. It was inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement that had begun in New York City a few weeks earlier. Members of Portland’s Jewish community constructed a sukkah during the Sukkot holiday, October 12 to 19, 2011.

[ABOVE] On Donald Trump’s first full day as President, thousands of people flooded Portland’s waterfront for the rain soaked Women’s March in one of the largest public demonstrations in Oregon history. The gathering included members of Oregon’s Jewish community, some of whom walked more than six miles to uphold the sanctity of Shabbat.

[BELOW] U.S. Sen Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler participated in the protest against Trump’s executive order that halted immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.

OJMCHE Director Judy Margles wears a Museums Are Not Neutral T-shirt in support of the global advocacy initiative co-produced by La Tanya S. Autry and Mike Murawski to confront the myth of museum neutrality and demand equity-based transformation across institutions. The initiative began in August 2017.

Lenders to the Exhibition

Susan Bloom

Shari and Paul Fishman

Kenneth Helphand

David Newman

Bonnie and Peter Reagan

Sandy Polichuk

Gretta Siegal

Steven Wasserstrom